[Wikimedia-l] : Copyright of deep space objects (DSOs) outside of the solar system

[とある白い猫]

I am not arguing that we should declare all deep space objects to be in
PD. I am proposing that we pursue congress pass a law to grant the needed
legal basis as I feel this should be public property. I am open to
alternative suggestions mind you.

Point is place and time does not matter as the object would look the same.
You cannot take the photo of a DSO (Deep Space Object) from a different
angle as long as you remain inside the solar system - even then the
perspective for objects beyond our own galaxy would require a trip to
another galaxy.

A couple of amateur observatories would not be able to produce images that
can rival Hubble which is in orbit. Atmosphere causes problems even with AI
based adaptive telescopes. It is like taking a photograph
underwater. Anyone using Hubble or another telescope in orbit would snap an
identical shot of the object since perspective will always be the same
(since the atmosphere effect is not present).

It takes light time to get to earth. For objects beyond our
galaxy, Andromeda is the closest and is 2.5 million light years away. In
other words by the time we snap a picture, our picture of Andromeda is
already 2.5 million years old (not considering relativistic effects).

  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)


On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:44 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 15 September 2012 07:24, とある白い猫 <to.aru.shiroi.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> >   Hi,
> >
> >   I am not seeking legal advice. I am asking the pursuit of the issue. I
> am
> > not a US citizen so I do not have a congress person to contact. The laws
> > governing copyright can be amended to address the issue of deep space
> > objects (DSO). I do not expect a result next week, I merely want the
> issue
> > to enter into an agenda of some sort. If the Foundation is going to take
> > the lead, this probably would only be possible through a board decision.
> In
> > such a case I want to work with people to come up with such a draft
> > proposal to the board.
> >
> >   I realize this is an unusual request but there seems to be a lack of
> > clarity on this issue[1]. Argument is that copyright can be an issue
> since
> > not every organization observing or assisting NASA's observations are
> > PD-USgov compatible. We may be forced to permanently delete all deep
> space
> > objects as a result.
> >
> >   I'd like to provide a short technical explanation why copyright of deep
> > space objects or DSOs (objects outside of the solar system) are
> > meaningless. For ordinary photographs copyright is determined by factors
> > such as lighting, perspective, exposure and other such settings that
> > creates a different image of the same object. You can distinguish the
> > difference between a daylight photo and an evening photo.
> >
> >   With deep space objects however, even the stellar parallax[2] has a
> very
> > small value. The closest object outside of the solar system is 4.24 light
> > years (268,136 AU's) away. The semi-major axis of earth is about 1AUs.
> The
> > difference in perspective is like looking at a 2cm (width of a nickel)
> wide
> > object 5.3km (3.29 miles) away and the perspective difference is
> switching
> > left eye to the right eye. We lack scientific instruments to even detect
> a
> > stellar parallax for objects much further. In other words our perspective
> > of the nearest star and beyond is more or less constant and the objects
> > themselves look the same for hundreds of years.
> >
> >   So any photo of a deep space object I or someone else takes from the
> > solar system will look identical regardless of when and where on earth I
> > take it within multiple lifetimes.
>
> Not so. The results from the Atacama Desert are going to be far
> clearer than the results from say Snowdonia. That is before we
> consider the issues of different filters, exposure times and
> instruments.
>
> If you claim was true we could just team up with a couple of amateur
> observetories (one in each hemisphere) and retake all the deep sky
> images (which might not be an entirely bad thing anyway).
>
>
> --
> geni
>
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